Late Bloomer
by 3C
Summary: She'll grow up fast, even if she can't be seventeen fast enough. [Set around S1 Finale and before S2E1.]


**Late Bloomer**

* * *

Buffy has almost died many times, and that's also if you try not to count the vampires. Not to make a Dances With Death joke. Giles says she's too much for dramatics. Her first encounter included spins and twirls and high kicks, and her last one definitely will. Whatever works. She burned down a gym. She hates tests. She can't get any worse.

Buffy has also died one time already. Buried alive with the casket closing in on her, her lungs shrieking for air, the dirt spitting in through the gaps of the wood. Waking up—vampire.

For some reason, it'd been less about the face and more about the situation. Her shoulders slumped. That, great, on top of everything else, there was that. A thirst for blood that kept her glancing at their necks when they had their backs turned. How she could hear, smell, taste-she'd wanted to stake herself.

And Buffy is tired. So tired.

If, in some wiggy alternate universe where he knew exactly the right thing to say, Giles had thought to ask Buffy then why she'd ended up buried alive, she might have told him. And she might've wanted to ask Billy how it was that his nightmare realm worked. It showed you things you were scared of, right? But how real was it? Could you die from it? How did it transform you, and did it linger?

But once the moment passed, Buffy wasn't keen on repeating it, and neither was Giles.

She isn't like that. She lingers, just like everyone else did, but it turns in the back of her mind, and she doesn't answer things unless they were brought up. By someone, in the right way.

She's sixteen, and there are no vampires gracing Sunnydale to quell the itch in her hands, the desire to feel something solid dusted under the stake.

* * *

Vampire faces are as ugly as they are scary. Somehow, it's harder to squint and take in the first fact when just a second behind and they'll eat you—blink and the fangs will puncture your neck, and you'll die.

She hadn't expected it with Angel, but then again, she hadn't expected him to be one at all.

It's not Angel she dreams about.

* * *

Buffy is sixteen, and she doesn't want to die. She's selfish, okay? And she's quit, she's fired, she's done. She has nightmares of this, this _thing-_ who's butt-ugly, by the way, could use some sun, maybe trim his nails-and.

Why is it her?

Why is it always Buffy?

Giles is her Watcher and that's all he does. He watches. Some part of Buffy wants him to take over for her dad, the one who forgets sometimes about the weekends they share. Some part of Buffy wants a consistency in her life, someone to say, "You don't have to do it anymore," but it's always Slayer first.

* * *

Buffy is sixteen, and Willow tells her about her friends. About the people she used to know, about the things they used to do. Buffy is sixteen and she left behind the same kind friends that Willow knew. A bit different in that they were ones that used to be concerned about popularity, friends who were like Cordelia in a way, who used to be like past-Buffy. Liked boys, liked dressing nice, barbed wire sarcasm wrapped up in nice little neat shells so she wouldn't lose her mind.

She's selfish.

She keeps the prom dress on. Stupid, kind of, considering what'll happen to it. But it'd be a waste not to keep wearing it. Who knows? Maybe it'll not get stained or torn or ruined in some way. Maybe she won't die. Maybe she won't have to sneak around her own mother anymore, live a double life where she saves the world from the Monster of the Week called by the Hellmouth.

Some part of her that's still concerned with looking okay, that keeps the idea of normalcy around, that everything is _fine (_ fake it to make it, you know, they teach it to you early, or else your mascara will run, you'll smear your eyeliner, you'll waste that cute lipgloss that tastes of fruits with all the salt):

Some part of her says, _Who cares anymore?_

Buffy knows a good dress from a bad dress; has spent years dedicated to cultivating a taste between fashionable and playful—learning to dress for herself and also maybe make someone notice her. Buffy's good at that, even if she gets a bit breathless and tongue-tied over the boys, a little dizzy-headed at the beginning but enamored at the end of the day. She knows the rules and she kept it up in Sunnydale, and in the rare times that Mom wasn't working at the gallery, they kept at it together.

So her mother hadn't been wrong. Not completely.

When she saw it in the store, she couldn't take her eyes off it.

It just wasn't because she wanted to wear it. It was the sort of dress Before Slaying Buffy would have liked to wear. White wasn't Buffy's colour; she didn't wear it if she could help it, as much as it matched. She liked brighter colours. White was what you wore to a wedding, and sue Buffy if she was a closet romantic.

Vamps didn't leave a stain when they dusted, but she tumbled, she ripped fabric, and she bled just as easy.

* * *

The Bronze passes in a blur, which is good.

Years down the line, Buffy doesn't ever want to have to think about it again. She'd like to avoid repeating dying, thanks.

* * *

She was a daddy's girl, once. Her mother didn't agree with it, but Buffy had been spoiled rotten once upon a time.

"You sure you'll be okay?"

Buffy doesn't do this whole sharing thing. At least, where it counts, she doesn't. Mom asks—it's not like Buffy can tell her.

"I'm fine," she says.

"If you don't want to go to your father's, you just say the word."

"Mom," Buffy says. "It's okay." It's not something you can forget after all, your own daughter staying with you over the summer. There's been calls late at night and sure, sometimes Dad is a little late on the weekends she's to spend with him, it's okay.

Giles is a father-figure to her. She's talked to him, argued with him, and spent more time with him (training) than she has her own actual father. She knows it's stupid. She doesn't let herself dwell on it; you win some, you lose some. You try hard to be a self-sufficient teenager in today's modern world, but you're still stuck with the same insecurities and worries that got you stuck in the first place.

That, plus being the Slayer.

She loves her father regardless. She loves him.

And she deserves this. Buffy died for something, and it's going to be the right to visit her father, away from the Hellmouth where she can have some space to breathe in the only real normal she has left.

* * *

Patrolling has become second nature to her. Of course, it's a little harder when it's not a suburban home in Sunnydale; LA is full of people and it's much harder to get a stake out of nowhere. Seems the new management prefers mace and cute heels.

As indulgent as he is, her dad's the more watchful. He won't ask questions of the bag she totes with her everywhere ("Girl stuff," she says tactfully, when he tries to break the silence), but there's a security alarm near the front door. That, and climbing out the window of a ten-story building is near impossible when trees are hardly even planted anywhere near the balconies. Buffy stays in what was supposed to be the guest room, but one she's long since appropriated. Walls painted in bright colours. Closet full of clothes she'd never wear now. A NKOTB poster or two.

Buffy's gotten used to the idea of her parents' separation for years now. Shuffling back and forth, it's probably a good thing that after all this time that she never established a permanency in her own routine. The only real habits she's developed these years is making sure her skin is good, her clothes are colorful and dustless, and pretending things don't bother her.

Her dad tries. She knows he does.

It hits her in the middle of a shopping spree, chatting with her dad about _yes_ , she needs that dress and that other one _both_ , that out of all that she's gone through, everything-nobody will ever know if Buffy is okay or not.

They say they care, but Buffy won't let anyone close enough in to see.

She doesn't blame anyone but herself. Buffy is hard pressed to keep a grudge if it isn't their fault and she's hard pressed to find blame in other people if she knows that the problem area is her. If it's justified, yes, but asides from that: Don't carry it with you, is the first lesson she teaches herself.

And give everyone a chance.

Buffy is lonely.

Physical pain is easy. All she needs to do is keep moving. The adrenaline keeps her from thinking too much of it. Giles trained her enough that her high kicks aren't too high, that her spins become less spinny, that she doesn't waste more effort than she needs. Physical is fine.

But emotional is hard.

* * *

She doesn't even think of Angel, actually until the moment comes.

"Boys?" her dad asks. "Any new boys in your life?"

"Sure," she says almost automatically. "Plenty. I'm a regular casanova. Jordan Knight comes to visit me in my dreams."

Like with all good things in her life that she can't have anymore—the good, normal things that she could've had, would've had, might've wanted and allowed herself to want—Buffy moves on.

Thoughts of Angel do not come with.

* * *

She cuts her hair. Always had long hair, always had someone suggesting maybe she should cut it because the vamps could rip, you know. Xander awkwardly but sweetly commenting that she'd look good no matter how short her hair was. She gets the cut done on a whim as she's parading through LA as an unknown face.

She buys that sleek black dress she's always thought was too showy-too sensual. She's never gone for black before; it's not her colour. She likes pink, likes the colours. But she needs the image change. She needs this change and she refuses to stay the same.

She buys the yellow shoes too, waiting for her dad to say no, but he doesn't. That's when she knows that she can get away with it. The realization strikes her that if she has to lose everything, she won't at least lose herself.

Buffy is sixteen, and she doesn't want to die.

And she won't.

She'll grow up fast, even if she can't be seventeen fast enough.

* * *

 _end._


End file.
